Tag Archive | write to heal

Presented by Fran Dorf, writer and therapist

You do not have to be a “writer” to explore writing as a mindful and powerful way to heal. To register, call 203-744-9642. Or online at www.dewyoga.net

Writing is a process by which the human soul can reveal, express, and heal itself…using words as tools.

Writing can be a medicine that helps us integrate our most frightening or difficult feelings and experiences, and even transform them. Research shows that writing has a beneficial effect on emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

In the Write-to-Heal Workshop, Fran creates an atmosphere of warmth and support, and all are welcome: practiced writers, novices, and those simply wanting to explore this way of healing. Fran meets each writer where he or she is, distinguishes between “process” (the healing part) and “outcome” (a whole other thing), and uses a combination of exercises and literary techniques she’s developed over many years to help people mine, discover, or even reclaim their deepest feelings and memories, and to give them voice, either directly or indirectly, using metaphor, image, and/or narrative. You will be surprised at your own power.
Bring a notebook, a pen, and a small meaningful object. Space is limited to 10. Registration is required, $45/person. Sign up by phone or online today!

If you’ve experienced any kind of loss, grief, addiction, illness or other trauma, and you’re interested in turning that into compelling memoir or fiction, join me at the beautiful Wainwright House in Rye, New York. Work with me. Where ever you are in your writing, I’ll meet you there.

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story,” said Isak Dinesen, author of “Out of Africa,” and “Babette’s Feast.” This quote beautifully puts into words why I went to the Westport Writer’s Workshop last Saturday to teach a class called “The Healing Art of Writing.” My goal? To help people who’ve experienced grief, loss, illness, abuse, violence, addiction, or other trauma try to turn those difficult emotional experiences into compelling fiction or memoir. I decided to teach the class partly because I know that to do this is healing, since I drew upon my own traumatic experiences to create both a novel and now a memoir. I also journaled obsessively before conceiving my novel, “Saving Elijah,” and used pieces of that journal in writing the book, so I know from experience that expressive writing is healing. But I’m also convinced that the discipline of creating a narrative or “story” out of the chaos of emotional experience is healing from the first draft to the last. I think most writers would to some extent agree. I know Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) would.

Here a bit about why I think so, along with steps to help you see if this might be for you:

Expressive Writing Practice: Journaling

Begin by developing an expressive writing practice such as journaling, three or four times a week, for ten or more minutes a day. Tons of research shows that just writing about trauma, loss, grief, or illness without any regard for the writing “product” has a healing effect and improves mental, emotional and physical well-being. This is because traumatic or emotionally charged experience is stored in the right brain as all chaotic sensation with no logic or language. When you bring language or narrative to any emotional experience as you do when you write, you bring this experience, or perhaps the memory and associated emotions of the experience into the logical, analytical left brain. This helps integrate the two and lessen emotional reactivity, a big part of healing. In doing therapy and facilitating workshops, I’ve even seen writing help to heal people who aren’t even particularly literate.

When you do expressive writing, knock the censor monkey off your shoulder, and express your feelings without thinking about the writing “product.” Bring it up from your guts. Don’t think about grammar, form, or appropriateness. Don’t worry that anyone will read what you’ve written. Banish all thoughts of I wouldn’t want anyone to see this, or This isn’t any good, or My eighth grade teacher—or my mom—told me I stank as a writer. Also banish all thoughts like, Nothing I could ever write could communicate how I feel. Write as if you were going to burn it. Don’t burn it though, since you’ll later find gems you can use to great effect when you write your memoir or fiction.

Even after you begin writing fiction or a memoir, begin each writing session with a few minutes of journaling or other form of expressive or free writing.

Expressive Writing Practice: Exercises

Take a “Write to Heal” workshop like the one I offer. Many individuals, hospitals, and healing centers around the country are offering these now. In my workshop, I provide exercises to help people express themselves without regard for the writing “product,” or how a reader might react, who might read it, or who might or might not be interested in reading it. Although sometimes write-to-heal writers produce beautiful writing, I facilitate these exercises primarily for their therapeutic value. I take the therapist’s “stance” in this setting. I empathetically accept and embrace whatever is produced., there is no literary criticism, and I make no attempt to teach the “craft” of writing, let alone the art. Sharing is optional of course, but there is also some therapeutic value to being “witnessed” and to “witnessing.”

Also, do the exercises on this website, or the exercises in books like Natalie Goldberg’s “Writing Down the Bones,” Bonnie Goldberg’s “Room to Write,” or Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way.” Again, make this a practice, several times a week.

Blogging: Is this expressive writing?

Nowadays many people blog episodically about their feelings and experiences around personal trauma, loss, or illness. Blogging can of course be healing too, in the sense that all writing can be healing. However, I suspect most bloggers do at least some selecting and revising before they publish, and so blogging isn’t true expressive writing in which no attention is given to the product. I hope so, because some blogs of this sort gain huge readerships. Readers actually read ONLY because they feel moved, entertained, instructed, or compelled to READ ON; readers, even readers of emotional blogs, don’t take the therapist’s stance of empathy and compassion and acceptance of feelings whatever they are. (You can certainly see this in some comments.) Which means the blogger who has made no attempt to process or intellectualize experience, distance herself from it, and prepare it and herself for the reactions of others can find herself retraumatized as readers who don’t empathize with her feelings react to or criticize the writing. I think publishing unprocessed emotional writing even in this confessional age can be VERY be psychologically risky. Oh my goodness, it was psychologically healing to give voice to my anger in my own journal after my son’s death, but publish that journal? No way.

On the other hand, it is also true that no matter how many revisions and how much processing you do before you publish any piece of writing, readers are going to bring their biases, craziness, projections, interpretations, and misinterpretations to it.David Sedaris put this brilliantly when he said: “Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize that it’s just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it. But even the “illusion” of control can be a good defense. Where would we all be without our illusions?

Write a memoir or fiction

Obviously not everyone can write a novel or a memoir, or would even want to, but the twenty women who came last Saturday to my class, each of whom has experienced trauma, illness, abuse, or loss, presented themselves as wanting to learn how to turn their experiences into stories in the literary form of fiction or memoir. I treated them like writers.

Yes, it’s hard to speak candidly to someone who’s experienced something awful that lies at the pit of her soul and who lives and breathes this thing every day. It’s hard to tell someone who’s gotten used to simply writing her feelings that there might be a more effective way to present them to help readers want to hear them. First of all, she’s been writing and knows how healing it feels to write, which is probably one of the reasons she’s decided she wants to bring her writing into literary form. Another is that she feels she has something important to share with others, some lesson learned, some hurdle crossed. (Therein, of course, may lie the arc or even the plot of her story. How DID she overcome that awful thing?)

I think some, although certainly not all writing teachers would find it hard to tell someone who, for example, is writing about the profound and devastating experience of losing a child that some of her words don’t compel the reader to turn the page, don’t communicate effectively, confuse, or even turn the reader off. I am of course sensitive to this, but I am tough-minded too because I know that learning craft and bringing it to your writing helps you intellectualize and separate from traumatic experience in a very unique way.

I know that even if feedback at first feels hurtful or invalidating, it’s actually the opposite. A reader or teacher who offers honest feedback actually validates your experience by showing she cares enough about it to help you express it more effectively, say by helping you learn the components of a scene, or by pointing out that you’ve “told” something rather than “shown” it.

And I know that every time you hear and tolerate criticism about what you have written about your trauma, and every time you decide (using your analytical left brain) to accept or reject that criticism, you distance yourself from the emotion of that trauma.

“Kill your babies,” Faulkner said about writers and their words, and the would-be memoir or fiction writer must learn to tolerate hearing that she must kill some of her babies. (You should pardon the pun.)

Yes, it’s a long grueling process, but…

We heal as we learn and apply writing “craft,” which after all is a discipline that comes out of left brain thinking.

We heal each time we rewrite or revise, because when we rewrite we rethink, re-remember, and re-imagine our experience, memories, even our whole life. Psychology and neuroscience have proposed many different models of memory, but one truth is: We do not remember our experiences, we only remember our last retrieval of our memory of our experiences. As we gather our short and long term memories to write a memoir or fiction, we revise those memories to fit them into the emotional arc (or plot) we are creating. Often this is a new vision of ourself as hero rather than victim in our own life story.

We heal each time we turn chaotic emotional experiences into work that fits within an accepted literary form, uses language in an evocative way, has narrative drive, and a beginning, a middle, and an end. Doing all this involves intellectual, logical left brain thinking and tamps down emotional right brain thinking. No one wants to read about a victim, or at least not a victim all the way through.

We heal as we learn to self-observe, as we discipline ourselves to make the hard choices about which elements of lived experience to include or exclude, and how best to organize and express material in order to compel readers to READ ON.

I just did an interview about my write to heal workshops for the terrific publication, Bottom Line/Women’s Health, so I thought I’d put a few exercises here, in case anyone reading the article is looking for more. Studies by Dr. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas and many others have definitively shown that writing about trauma enhances physical, emotional and mental well being. My own personal and professional experience bears this out. The process of writing “Saving Elijah” saved me after my son’s death, I think. Creating narrative (and/or meaningful image or metaphor) helps us gain distance from and understand our trauma (including serious bereavement) by transferring and integrating emotional memories, which are primarily stored in the right brian, into the more logical left brain. Here’s a quote from B. S. Van der Kolk, a leading trauma researcher, “Traumatic memory is are primarily imprinted in sensory and emotional modes principally stored in the right hemisphere of the brain, as opposed to the left hemisphere, which mediates verbal communication and organizes problem solving tasks into a well ordered set of operations and process information in a sequential fashion.” More about all that in a later post.

By the way, I’ve decided to change the basic name of my workshops from “Write to Heal,” to “Writing for Wellness and Healing,” to broaden their appeal, and because you don’t have to have experienced major trauma to benefit. Anyone who has experienced emotional upheaval can benefit from writing. (Or from any creative endeavor, for that matter.) And who hasn’t experienced emotional upheaval in life?

Here are some exercises to get you started. Remember, with all deference to those who think our every waking thought and feeling must be laid out there for all to see, you don’t have to share what you write with anyone. So tell the truth.

1. DIG WIDE, DIG DEEP EXERCISE

Part 1. Begin with “I remember.”Write lots of small memories, and begin each with the words “I Remember.” Don’t be concerned if the memories happened five seconds ago or five years ago, or if they are memories about your lost child or your grandmother, a vacation you once took, or a kid from school.Don’t worry if they are happy memories or sad ones, big memories or small ones, important memories or fleeting ones.Be in the moment as you remember them and write them as quickly as you can without stopping. Try this for seven minutes.

Part 2:Now read over your list and choose one memory that speaks to you and write about it as a scene and/or in great depth, with sensory details (what did you see, smell, touch, feel).Really dig in.Seven minutes.

Part 3: Now write that memory as if it didn’t happen to you, but rather as if it happened to someone else.The easiest and most effective way to do this is to put it in the third person, instead of the first person. (Actually, this is a good alternate for many of the exercises in this list—write it in the third person.)Seven minutes.

2. DIALOGUE WITH GOD EXERCISE

For this exercise, imagine you’re walking down the road one fine day.Or you could be in your kitchen and there’s a knock at the door, or at your desk, or on the bleachers watching your child’s hockey game, or sitting down at your desk.You choose the setting, which I hope you will describe with as many sensory details as you can.And suddenly a person comes up to you whom you somehow recognize as God.What does God look like? Describe God’s appearance.I’m not necessarily looking for flowing robes, white beards and symbols of religion here, because presumably God can take any form.Choose one that has meaning to you: someone you know or don’t know, someone from your past or future, your dead child or sister, Morgan Freeman, George Burns, your long lost Aunt, a Buddhist monk.What is he wearing?What does he look like?You get to have a conversation with God. Don’t hold back.God can take whatever you dish out.

And you say to God, “Why me?”And God says, “Why not you?”

Write the scene complete with dialogue from there.Try to get past any nervousness you have about talking to God, and even consider challenging God.For example, if you don’t like God’s answer, say so.As always, feel free to write this from someone else’s point of view, either in the first person or third.Do this for seven minutes.

3.RIGHT NOW EXERCISE (MINDFULNESS)

Write about what you’re thinking and feeling right this minute.Start a list:My jeans are too tight.I drank too much coffee this morning.I feel jittery.The sunlight is pouring in the window. My arm hurts.I feel nervous.Something smells in here. ….Do this for five minutes.

4. FOUR SQUARE EXERCISE

One of the ways we can discover our writing selves is to discover unexpected ways of observing everyday objects.Think of an object.Perhaps it’s something you’re wearing, a bracelet, or a belt.Or maybe it’s a lock of hair, or a stuffed animal.Or maybe it’s something you see in the room. Divide a piece of paper into four squares.In the top left square, describe the object as specifically as you can, with as many specific details as you can.In the top right square, list all the feelings the object evokes.In the lower left, create similies of what the object is like or what it reminds you of.And finally in the lower right, put yourself in place of the object, take the voice of the object and write from the object’s perspective.

Once you’ve done that, see if you can use some of what you’ve written to create a poem.

5. WRITING PROMPTS

How satisfied are you with your life right now?

What thrills you?

What do you need?

What are you afraid of?

Where do you feel stuck?

What activities or practices help you in difficult times?

What do you long for?

What are the great sadnesses in your life?

What are you jealous of

What forces surround your life or work that are out of your control?

What fight or burden are you ready to give up for now?

What do you regret?

Write about a time you felt joy?

In what ways are you good at taking care of yourself? What ways are you bad at it?

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Welcome!

Welcome to my psychotherapy website. I am a licensed clinical social worker with a private practice in Stamford, Connecticut. I also facilitate bereavement groups at the Center for Hope in Darien, Connecticut and in Westchester County, New York. I believe that human beings have an absolute capacity for change, and can also find meaning in even the most profound of losses. When I sit with you, whether in group or with you as an individual, I am present, open, empathetic, non-judgmental, and committed to helping you become all you wish to be, and CAN be. On this blog I post announcements about my psychology related activities, such as bereavement groups, writing for healing groups and speaking gigs. Also, I post interesting psychology-related articles, and articles about grief, written by me or curated from around the web. I have a separate website about my novels, playwriting, and writing projects: www.frandorf.ink. For that, click the link in the tabs above.

Hours & Info

I am available weekdays, some evenings. Call me at 203-536-3531 for a free phone consultation and appointment.

My services

My services are completely confidential. My specialty is bereavement, but I also treat anxiety, depression, relationship issues, self esteem, anger and impulse control, trauma, and much more. I see adults, adolescents, and couples in individual therapy. I also facilitate several bereavement groups, one with parents who've lost children, and another with seniors who've lost their partners. I use an eclectic mix of methods, creative and traditional, to achieve goals we set together, including narrative therapy, cognitive/behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, mindfulness, meditation, and expressive arts. As a longtime writer, I have developed the "write to heal" method, and can employ writing as a healing tool with my clients, if they're interested.